Hey guys,

I was teaching my sister how to parallel park in my '12 FWD TL the other day. About 20 minutes in, she told me she was having trouble moving the steering wheel. I switched seats with her, and I noticed that the power steering was either shut-off, or having issues. The steering wheel felt extreme heavy and I had trouble moving it past half a turn (getting it to turn 3/4ths-1 full rotation took a while and required alot of strength). It got better, but the two extremes (full left and full right) turning took a while to reach as well. After a few minutes I guess the system reset or turned back on and I could turn the wheels fully without any trouble.

She continued practicing after that, and again after another 10-15 minutes the wheels locked up. This time I took out my OBDII reader and checked for fault codes, but nothing popped up. The info screen was clear as well, no dash lights either. I had a service appointment earlier this morning for an oil change, and I notified the tech. he told me it was hard to diagnose since it wasn't happening and there was no code stored in the ECU. I asked him to take a look at it, but when I check the service bill, there was no notice that they checked the steering system. I'm afraid this issue will happen again, but this time at highway speeds where the car will be 100% unmanageable (I had trouble steering the car at 10MPH... imagine 65-70). Anyone else have this issue popup?

(Also, what's the "B1" service include? My tech told me it's an oil-change, tire rotation, and e-brake reset, and told me it's about 99-110 w/tax. I declined that, and just went with an oil-change. Should I do the e-brake reset as well? I'm changing my tires within 3 months so I can decline the rotation)

 

 

Uhh...

 

Although I don't have a resolution to your problem, from my experience when traditional power steering fails, it's more difficult to turn the steering wheel at slower speeds than it is while the car is in motion.

In any case, I would imagine, if necessary, the EPS has a safety feature that would allow the rack to be controlled manually if the system failed.

 

Was your sister doing double time cranking the steering wheel from side to side for the full 20 mins ?

May be the steering motor has shutdown due to overheating.

Once the motor has cooled down enough, power assist to the steering wheel will be restored.

 

Yeah, essentially the entire time she was pulling in/out of a few different parking spots (just cones, thankfully not cars, she hit the cones like twice, no scratches though -.-) That's a pretty good explanation, makes sense on both parts.

 

Sorry, I know this is an old thread but this has happened to me this morning when I got in my car to go to work. Did the OP ever get this resolved at the dealership? I have an appointment set up for next week and would like to know what to expect.

 

No, the dealer took a look at the car and checked out the motor. ECU didn't show any codes, and the motor was cleared out as well. It hasn't happened since, so I guess my case was just overheating of the motor.